Journey Into Worship Dave Roberson... this could be the very key You have been looking for. It is a key that could change your faith forever as it changes the way you receive from God. A year ago we started having extended times of worship in our Friday night services at The Family Prayer Center. Our goal is to help people break into a place of private worship so that it will be easier for them to continue their times of private worship outside of church services. In these meetings, we open up with an hour or so of corporate worship in which a worship team leads the congregation in singing. Then I teach for about a half hour on the subject of worship before we spend about two hours alternately practicing both private and corporate worship. During this time, I encourage the people to choose their own words, ministering to the Lord out of the sanctuary of their own hearts. With that same goal in mind, I want to teach you about worship today, sharing from my own journey into that place of private worship and the wonderful truths I discovered along the way. In one of our services a few years ago, there was a special prayer line to receive strength for change. In these kinds of lines, the grace of God is available to help us trade our weaknesses for His strength. A friend of mine was helping me minister that night. When he had almost reached the end of the line, the Holy Spirit told me to get in. The moment I obeyed, a gentle breeze blew past my ears and my spirit seemed to be getting lighter and lighter. The next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor and the Holy Spirit was speaking to me. He began by saying, "You do not know anything about worship;" then He went on to instruct me to worship a certain amount of time each day. This doesn't necessarily mean worship can be scheduled in and out like an appointment, but the Holy Spirit wanted me to set aside a certain amount of time so I could initially break through and understand what it was He was wanting to teach me. Because I was on a certain day of a fast, my mind immediately questioned, How about fasting? Do You want me to continue fasting? The Lord responded, "I didn't tell you not to fast, but fasting cannot give you what worship can; neither can worship give you what fasting can." Immediately, my mind protested a little. But then God reminded me of three revivalists, two of whom would fast two or more forty-day fasts a year. As I thought back over these men's lives and how effective their ministries had been, God helped me understand that when anyone puts all his confidence in just one key, such as fasting, and believes it is the answer for everything, there will be certain areas of his life that God cannot minister to. As I lay there on the floor, I became excited at the prospect of being taught by the Holy Spirit to worship in a new way. As my mind continued to ponder the different keys He had given me over the years, I couldn't help but think that if I was guilty of exalting one key as the answer to everything, it would be praying in tongues. God comforted me regarding that matter, however. He assured me that since praying in tongues is a revelation gift, it is something a person cannot do too much. Praying in tongues was also the avenue by which the Holy Spirit was able to reveal to me the other keys I now understand and hold so close to my heart keys such as meditation of the Word, confessing the Word, fasting, and now, worship.
So after the Holy Spirit said to me, "You do not know much about worship," I made the necessary arrangements to set aside a certain amount of time each day to worship and find out what He wanted me to know. I went into my sound room where I make radio tapes, closed the door, and began to worship the Lord. Two weeks later, I was experiencing God's Presence on a level that until that time, I had only known to exist in the realm of possibility. Drinking deeply from the deep well of worship had brought God's tangible Presence, causing me to experience firsthand what so many believers are looking for. Follow me closely now; this could be the very key You have been looking for. It is a key that could change your faith forever as it changes the way you receive from God. As many times as I have read through and meditated on the Word of God, it continues to amaze me how much of it I still miss. When I think I know everything about a verse, it happens again - something opens up that changes the way I look at what God is saying through that verse. This is what happened to me one day with the passage of Scripture in John 4 where Jesus sat on the edge of Jacob's well and began to reveal His heart and the heart of His Father to the Samaritan woman. As I meditated on these verses, it changed the way I looked at worship. There at Jacob's well, as I listened to my spirit and went over the encounter Jesus had with this woman again and again, I began to understand what my Father wanted from me: He desires a closeness that one can only experience with family. God is first our Father; then He is our God. As our God, He has given us everlasting life and has secured our future with an abundance that is as inexhaustible as the limitless power He holds as Creator. But as our FATHER, God wants to enjoy fellowship with us -the closeness we can only give Him through being born again and climbing into His arms with a nature like His own. We can then love Him with the adoration and worship of children who believe the sun rises and sets on our Father and that there is none other like Him. This is what I came to understand: As Jesus sat on the edge of Jacob's well and talked with the Samaritan woman, He was separating the kind of worship that believers can give to God the Father from the worship that Old Testament saints could experience with Him. Under the Old Covenant, people could not give God what they did not have - the worship that comes from the new nature of the born-again spirit. That is the kind of worship God desires from His people, for He is a Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth: But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him. John 4:23 When Jesus said, But the hour cometh, and now is," He meant that never before in the history of mankind had there been a time when any person could worship God in spirit and in truth. Not since the fall of Adam and the spiritual death of the human race had anyone been able to give God what He desired from them - the fellowship and worship that emanates from the new nature. But WE can, because we have been born again! Then Jesus said, "For the Father seeketh such to worship him." Jesus didn't mean that the Father was hopping from church to church, looking for a good worship team. Rather, Jesus was saying that God had sought and waited throughout the generations that led up to the Cross, patiently working the redemption plan and longing for the day when He could restore the new nature to the human race. When this new nature was restored through Jesus, the Father could finally enjoy the kind of fellowship with His children He had been seeking for four thousand years a fellowship made possible only through the new birth.
It isn't that God didn't have a relationship with the Old Testament saints; He did. They worshiped Him out of their souls and gave Him as much of themselves as they could. But as much as God loved them, He was only able to enjoy a limited level of closeness with them because of their sin natures. And even that closeness could only be obtained through animal sacrifice as they worshiped Him through the cleansing veil of animal blood. What God longed for, they could not give: the fellowship and worship that comes from being born again and having the same nature as He does. As Hebrews 10:4 says: For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins. Jesus could not have spoken more highly of anyone under the Old Covenant than He did of John the Baptist when He said in Matt 11:11: Verily I say unto you, Among them that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist: notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. Of all the Old Testament saints the prophets or the men of wisdom such as Moses, David, and King Solomon Jesus said there had never been born of woman anyone greater than John the Baptist. Then Jesus went on to say, "He that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." The question is, Why is this true? Before Jesus rose from the dead, the new nature was not yet available. Therefore, the least in the Kingdom of Heaven under the New Covenant would be greater than John because the Old Testament saints had not yet been given the new nature. But how could Jesus say that the least in the Kingdom of Heaven was greater than John? Didn't John already belong to the Kingdom of Heaven? No, because the new nature was not yet available, and John, like Nicodemus, had not yet been born again. So John couldn't give the Father what He most longed for, the fellowship of the new nature. Neither could King Solomon or King David. These saints' fellowship with God pulled up short because of their unregenerated human spirits. They could not go there -but we can, for we have been born again. All the Old Testament saints lived under the shadow of things to come. However, one thing we can know for sure is that a shadow cannot exist without something being present to make the shadow. In this case, a person who is born again no longer belongs to the shadow but has been baptized into that which made the shadow in the first place - the Body of Christ. Thus, we can better understand Paul's exhortation to the Colossians when the Judaizers came and tried to indoctrinate them to keep the Law. Paul said in Colossians 2:16,17: Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ. I run into believers frequently who keep the sabbath, not understanding that the sabbath was a type or a shadow of something else to come. They don't understand that once He who is making the shadow has come, it is impossible to live in the shadow and in that which is making the shadow at the same time. Have you wondered why under the shadow the Law a man who did nothing more than pick up a stick of firewood on the sabbath day would be stoned to death? And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man that gathered sticks upon the sabbath day. And they that found him gathering sticks brought him unto Moses and Aaron, and unto all the congregation. And they put him in ward, because it was not declared what should be done to him. And the Lord said unto Moses, The man shall be surely put to death: all the congregation shall stone him with stones without the camp. And all the congregation brought him without the camp, and stoned him with stones, and he died; as the Lord commanded Moses. Numbers 15:32-36
Under the shadow, the sabbath was a type of the rest you and I would enter into when we became born again and ceased from the burden and weight of our own sin. We know that Joshua wasn't able to give the children of Israel that kind of rest when he led them across the Jordan into the Promised Land. Otherwise, Paul wouldn't have said what he did in Hebrews 3:8-10: For if Jesus [Joshua] had given them rest, then would he not afterward have spoken of another day. There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. The only way we can be born again is to cease from our own works and enter into the rest of God. The fact that the sabbath was a type of this rest you and I enter into when we are born again is the reason the penalty was so stringent for violating the sabbath - even for something as simple as picking up a piece of firewood. We cannot earn our own salvation. Therefore, any works whatsoever done "under the shadow" on the sabbath in effect took our salvation out of grace and put it under works - a place from which it is impossible for man to be saved. This is why Paul said in Ephesians 2:8,9: For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. Old Testament saints like John the Baptist, King David, and David's son, King Solomon, waited out the generations leading up to the Cross in an Old Testament type of Heaven - the shadow of Heaven itself. It was a very comfortable place, referred to by Jesus in Luke 16:22: And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom... Later Jesus went on to say that Lazarus was comforted in this place. So the Old Testament saints were waiting comfortably under the shadow throughout the dispensations that led to the Cross until Jesus could give them all a new nature. Then Jesus brought them out from underneath the shadow into Heaven itself, forever to be in the Presence of God. It wasn't just the Old Testament saints who were waiting. All of creation waited for the firstborn from the dead - Jesus, the Son of God - to be physically born into the earth: And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence. Colossians 1:18 We know that this verse is talking about a spiritual resurrection and not a natural one because there were several resurrections from the dead under the Old Covenant before Jesus' time. If it was a natural resurrection God was talking about, any one of these could have been first because they were all before Jesus' resurrection. The emphasis is not on Jesus' natural resurrection, but on His SPIRITUAL resurrection, for how could He be called the firstborn from the dead had there been anyone before Him? There was not. NOT EVEN ADAM! After the spiritual death of the human race, all had to wait for the FIRSTBORN so that they might follow Him out of spiritual death. So when the Holy Spirit said to me, "You don't know much about worship," He was speaking of His desire for me to understand the difference between Old and New Testament worship: Out of our new nature flows a sin-free communion through worship from our spirit to God's Spirit, for God is a Spirit and He seeks such to worship Him. Our Father longs for our fellowship. You may as well know that when you reach Heaven and are surrounded by all of Heaven's glories, your personal worship will be spontaneous. You won't be able to contain yourself! To get a sense of heavenly
worship, think of the feelings you experience when you love someone so much that your greatest joy is to bring that person happiness. Then multiply those same feelings hundreds of thousands of times, and you may begin to get a glimpse of what it will be like in Heaven to worship your Father. When we stand in Heaven and see the Father smile at us, we will feel like we have found our greatest purpose in life. The floods of joy we experience at that moment will make us certain that we are the highest achievers who ever lived, and just knowing we have pleased Him will be the most fulfilling thing we have ever done. As the Father's joy sweeps over us in waves, our deep-seated feelings will escape us, erupting frequently in fervent worship. In the midst of all this, we will know we have found everything we could ever want. And with eternity ahead of us, we'll know that the joy we are experiencing will never end but will only keep getting better. But,just think - we don't have to wait until we get to Heaven to experience this kind of worship! The Father lives in great expectation that we will begin to fellowship with Him on this level NOW, for there is no distance between the Lord and us. What separated us in the past could not be measured by standards of distance but only by spiritual death. Now we have been put back into the Father's Presence. We can worship Him and fellowship with Him as though we were in Heaven itself all because we have been given a new nature! God had tried to lead me into extended worship a year and a half before this time; I only wish I had listened. Had I known what worship would do to my faith, much less my ability to receive from God, I would have surrendered long ago to even the smallest of His promptings. It wouldn't have taken the light rebuke I received in the prayer line that night. Hear what I am saying. Take it from an old war horse who has been around for a while: This spiritual key could be the very thing you have been hungering for. Some time ago, I was on my way back from a Passion play. Everything was perfect in it: the costumes, the acting, the music. Nothing was out of place - not one note of music, not one prop. Hell was hot, and the angels flew. There was just one problem - NO ANOINTING! While riding home from the play, I wondered why this was so. What would it take to fill a Passion play like that with God's Presence? God took advantage of this situation to teach me. He gave me the kind of vision that materializes in the spirit, yet is worth the understanding of a thousand words. In the vision, I saw a small rock landing in a pond. The ripples that emanated from the stone filled the whole pond. Then the Lord said to me, "The more you worship, the more the Holy Spirit will be able to permeate your spirit with His Presence. The ripples from your spirit will permeate your soul, and the ripples from your soul will permeate your senses. Finally, the Presence of the Holy Spirit will not only surround your entire being; He will permeate the atmosphere around you until even other people are aware of His Presence." Can you imagine what the results of this kind of worship could do to a worship leader's anointing, to a preacher's message, or to a believer's home? And what could it do to the unbelief that we all have to fight against? Certainly emotions can just as easily be changed by God's Presence as they are by the presence of torment and fear! Now, when I locked myself in my sound room, I had no other motive other than to worship God. I wasn't asking for anything; I wasn't trying to receive anything. Therefore, I wasn't entirely prepared for what was
about to happen. At first it was easy, but later the time I had committed to worship began to stretch itself out until even minutes took their time as they slowly passed by. At times I felt as dry as cracker juice, and my flesh felt as cold as a side of beef in a meat locker. Nevertheless, I kept worshiping - and then it began to happen. A kind of baptism of my senses began to take place as God's Presence came and lingered with me while I went about my day. This Presence seemed to want to fellowship with my decisions and with my prayers as I prayed for people. In fact, He would be there before I was. He seemed to want to fill my faith with the substance of the things I was hoping for, for longstanding desires began to come in. Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. (Hebrews 11:1) I should have known that worship had something to do with receiving from God! God put me into extended periods of time of worship to teach me because I am a teacher and He knew I would do it. There is so much more I could share about how to experience the kind of worship I have been talking about. But for now, let me encourage you to start with this. Set aside time each day in which to give yourself completely to worship. I can tell you that even a half hour to an hour each day will be enough time to start EVERYTHING, for God loves it when you offer your entire self, pouring everything you are into statements of adoration to Him, even for short periods of time. Take that time to magnify and glorify your Father. Give Him all the praise, honor, and glory. He loves it when you continually say things from your heart such as, "I love You, Father God. I love You, Father. I adore You, and I want You more than life." If you have enough faith to do this, you are going to be surprised at what God will do for you. You see, it isn't how good your statements about God sound as you try to structure your worship into great theological speeches. Rather, it is the amount of heart and soul you pour into each statement of adoration. Look at what Ephesians 5:17-20 says about worship: Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit; Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord; Giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. When Paul talks about "speaking to yourselves in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs," he is referring to private worship. When I went before God to worship Him, I had no other motive but to love Him and to give Him glory. But we cannot go before God to worship Him without our worship having a profound effect on our senses. I have come to call this experience "the baptism of my senses in His Presence." Look again at what verse 18 says: And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit. Now consider this: What part of the person is affected by too much alcohol? Isn't it their natural senses? Yet Paul compares this experience to being filled with the Holy Spirit! Let's discuss why Paul chose to do that. First, why does an alcoholic drink? He drinks to try to cope with life's problems. He sedates his senses with alcohol so the reality of his problems never has to settle in. But that isn't so with us. God had to leave us in a physical body, yet we belong to a spiritual Kingdom. Our senses are continually in contact with a negative world that we have to deal with every day. But whereas an alcoholic has to deal with life by numbing his senses to it, you and I can deal with life by being filled with
the Spirit, speaking to ourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs (which is private worship). As we offer ourselves to the Lord in private worship, His Presence will have a similar effect on our senses that alcohol has on an alcoholic's senses. The difference is this: The alcoholic is running AWAY FROM his responsibilities; you and I are running TOWARD ours. The pressure of alcohol moving upon an alcoholic's mind shifts him from responsibility to irresponsibility. By contrast, the Presence of the Holy Spirit moving upon our minds moves us from a world of irresponsibility into a world of responsibility, sedating us against the negative input of the world rising up against the promises of God. This experience manifests itself in a supernatural peace that says, "God's Kingdom is more real and alive to me than the operation of this world." One last point I want to make about my times of private worship. During these times, I don't ask for anything; I just spend my time telling my Father how much I love Him. I also spend time thanking Him and praising Him for all that He has provided for me, according to Ephesians 5:20: Giving thanks always for all things to God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Finally, as you make room for times of private worship in your daily schedule, remember that Jesus will become to you whatever you call Him the most. You cannot worship God for an hour and call Jesus your Healer, your Provider, your Peace, or your Wisdom, without His becoming to you what you have called Him. So call on the Lord in your time alone with Him and listen closely to what the Holy Spirit speaks to your spirit. Make any needed adjustments He leads you to make, trading your weaknesses for His strength and your carnality for His holiness. As you diligently take these first steps into private worship, you'll have a much easier time breaking into that intimate place of worship than I ever did. And as you experience the baptism of your senses in the Presence of God, you will discover that this indeed was the very thing your heart has been longing for all along!